Tatars

[Dave]

In another thread http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=12...=0entry156565 , I opened the ''Pandora's Box'' and Arpa insisted that I should create a new thread about the Tatars.

 

Tatars came from Central Asia, and are related with the Turks and Mongols. Turks, Mongols, Tatars, and others are, according to Turkish nationalism, a part of ''the great Turan nation''. This was the same ideology that encouraged the Young Turks to commit genocide.

 

According to wikipedia, Tatars came from a region in Northeastern Mongolia, and they migrated to southern Russia and in other Balkan countries after the invasion of Tamerlane, or Timur Lenk, who was in reality of Turkic origin.

 

Again, according to what I read, ''Tatar'' seems to be as vague as ''Arab''. A Tatar from the Caucasus surely has few similarities with a Tatar from the Balkans.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatars

 

Tatars and Turks use a similar language, and have interacted a lot in the past. That's why there must have been some confusion with Azerbaijani Turks. As you said, Caucasian Azeri identity was created in the early 20th century.

 

Timur Lenk - called Lenk Timur in Armenian, and Tamerlane in English - was Turkic/Tatar/Mongol conqueror who destroyed great cities like Baghdad and Damascus. He even reached the Western shores of Anatolia, and captured Smyrna. Read the description of the massacre and destruction of Smyrna here, starting p.22:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0966745108...201#reader-page

 

There's also decent description about Tamerlane in wikipedia.

 

Read about how the Azeri identity was a creation of the 19th and 20th centuries in this site:

http://www.cilicia.com/dgindex.htm

 

Since there were different Turkic, Mongolian, and Tatar tribes in the Russian provinces of Baku and Elizavetpol, and since that region holds oil, it was in the interest of world powers to stabilize the area. That's why the Azeri identity was created...

[Armen Half-Celt]

Actually its interesting, one of my friends said the Tatars were a number of turkic tirbesmen inhabiting Crimea leftover from the Ottoman Empire during the 18th and 18th century. Which i believe is ture. However, the Tatars are also a tribe of of Trukic or Mongol people who fueded with Ghengis Khan prior to his imperial conquest. Apparently he extirminated nearly all of them, since they were the people who had killed his father. I'm unsure if the two peoples are directly related.